New Problems in Quest for Presidency : Letters in Robertson Suit Fuel Combat Role Charge

In February, 1951, during some of the darkest days of the Korean War, the late Sen. A. Willis Robertson (D-Va.) wrote to a friend that he had some good news about his son Pat, then a young Marine lieutenant and now a candidate for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination.

After contacting a friendly Marine general, the senator wrote, he expected Pat to be taken off a U.S. troopship for “some valuable training” in Japan instead of accompanying the rest of his unit directly to Korea--where many would be killed or wounded in the savage fighting.

Soon afterward, in another letter, the senator expressed hope that “before that (training) is completed the issue in Korea will either have been settled or the united line so stabilized that there will be no excessive casualties . . . .”

The letters are among documents contained in the files of a pending lawsuit that may pose new problems for Robertson in his quest for the presidency. While some of Robertson’s former Marine comrades have already charged that political strings were pulled to keep him away from the fighting, the letters add fuel to the controversy because they are contemporaneous documents penned by Robertson’s own father.

Specifically, the former television evangelist is fighting allegations, first made by former Rep. Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey (R-San Mateo), that his father’s political influence was responsible for the fact that he, along with a boyhood schoolmate and a handful of others aboard a troopship in 1951, was assigned to special duties in Japan while most members of their Marine unit went on to Korea.

The controversy involves a period during the early winter of 1951 when U.S. forces in Korea were struggling to recover from one of the bloodiest disasters ever to befall American arms: the surprise entry into the war of thousands of Chinese troops, who fell upon unprepared U.S units just as they reached the Yalu River and the Chosin Reservoir on the border between China and North Korea. Shattered and demoralized, the troops fighting under the banner of the United Nations had suffered devastating casualties as they retreated before the Chinese onslaught.

$35-Million Libel Suit

Robertson has filed a $35-million libel suit against McCloskey, a highly decorated Marine combat veteran who knew Robertson while both served in the corps.

The GOP candidate has said it is important for him to disprove the allegations against him because a President would be in a poor position to order American servicemen into combat if his own military record were in doubt.

“If I am elected President, how could I as commander in chief order a young American into combat if the record is not absolutely clear that I never shirked military duty,” Robertson said in explaining the suit. “This is an attack by liberals to discredit me because of my strong support of national defense and our armed forces.”

The outcome of Robertson’s libel suit could be a significant factor in his presidential race since he has campaigned as a hard-liner on defense issues. Recently, for example, in referring to the Iranian attack on a U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker in the Persian Gulf, he said: “If I were President today, we already would have taken out those Silkworm missiles that came against one of our flag tankers.”

About a third of all delegates to the GOP nominating convention will already have been selected when the television evangelist’s suit is scheduled for trial next March.

Among the documents assembled in the case by McCloskey’s lawyers is a Feb. 7, 1951, letter written by Sen. Robertson to Francis Pendleton Gaines, the father of Edwin Gaines, one of Pat Robertson’s boyhood schoolmates. The letter says Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr., commander of Marines in the Pacific and a friend of the senator’s, had written that Pat, one of two of the senator’s sons, and Edwin would be going to Japan for “some valuable training before proceeding to Korea.”

A handwritten memo dated two days later to Sen. Robertson from the senior Gaines, then president of Washington and Lee University in Virginia, declares: “Shall always be grateful for everything you have done.”

Expresses Hopes to Friend

It was shortly after this, in a letter to a friend in London dated Feb. 12, 1951, that Sen. Robertson said he thought that Pat and a few others “will be dropped off in Japan for further training and naturally Gladys and I hope that before that is completed the issue in Korea will either have been settled or the united line so stabilized that there will be no excessive casualties as in the Marine retreat from the Reservoir area.”

Among the letters in the files assembled by McCloskey’s attorneys is one from Sen. Robertson to Gen. Shepherd thanking him for his “encouraging message” that Pat Robertson would be getting more training in Japan “before engaging in combat duty in Korea.”

Other evidence gathered by McCloskey includes testimony by a former Marine officer who produced a letter he wrote his wife at the time calling Robertson’s transfer “rotten politics.”

Robertson vehemently denies McCloskey’s allegations in a 1,000-page deposition taken by defense attorneys. He also accuses McCloskey of making him a laughing stock by falsely alleging that he avoided combat service and that he was a “booze” officer who supplied fellow officers with liquor.

As the case develops, Robertson said, “I have no doubt that the falsity of the libelous statements will be apparent.”

Denies ‘Special Favors’

Responding specifically to questions raised by his father’s letters, Robertson said in the deposition: “I personally did not do anything to ask for special favors, nor did my father, and if General Shepherd, in his wisdom, wanted to reassign me, he did so . . . “

Gen. Shepherd, now 91, said in a letter released by Robertson supporters in Sept., 1986, after the controversy first surfaced, that he had “no recollection” of any special request to keep Robertson out of combat. The general wrote the letter in response to an appeal for help from Robertson.

Robertson also filed a $35-million libel suit--later dropped--against Rep. Andrew Jacobs Jr. (D-Ind.), another Korean combat veteran, after McCloskey wrote a letter to Jacobs at Jacobs’ request saying Robertson had avoided combat and falsely claimed he was a combat veteran. The letter was widely distributed among news organizations and resulted in a spate of columns and stories.

In the letter to Jacobs, McCloskey wrote that he distinctly recalled that Robertson spoke frankly of his father pulling strings to keep him out of combat and that Robertson subsequently was assigned to a base in Japan while most of his fellow officers continued on to Korea. McCloskey himself was severely wounded while leading six bayonet charges as a platoon leader.

Question of Malice

Jacobs subsequently was dropped as a defendant in the libel case after U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled that there was no evidence that Jacobs, in distributing McCloskey’s letter, had acted with reckless disregard of whether the information it contained was true or false. But Judge Green ruled that in McCloskey’s case the question of actual malice, which public figures must prove to win libel damages, was a question for a jury to decide.

In one of the depositions taken by defense attorney George Lehner, Harry Steinmeyer of St. Louis said under oath that Robertson asked a fellow Marine, Lt. Dave Harstein, who was going ashore, to transmit a cable to Robertson’s father that said: “Have been placed in 5th Marines. Want action.”

Steinmeyer, who also was a Marine lieutenant, said Robertson, Gaines and four other Marine lieutenants subsequently were told they were being transferred to Japan and Robertson asked Harstein to send another cable to his father saying simply: “Thanks.”

Writes to His Wife

Harstein is deceased, but one of the defense documents is a three-page handwritten letter he wrote to his wife, Mrs. H.D. Harstein, in St. Louis, dated Feb. 14, 1951, which says in part:

“When we were in Kobe (Japan) yesterday, a Col. came aboard to choose several officers to retrain casualties that were getting ready to go back to Korea. He chose six lieutenants, none of whom had ever had any combat. It’s interesting to note that two of them had said they wouldn’t have to go to Korea. One was the Robertson that General Shepherd wanted to see and I’m sure that his father being the senator . . . had nothing to do with it and the other was a kid named Gaines whose father is president of Washington and Lee University.”

Steinmeyer also gave defense attorneys a three-page handwritten letter, dated Feb. 14, 1951, that he wrote to his wife which said in part:

“Here’s one I have to tell you. Lt. Gaines and a Lt. Robertson (whose father is senator from Va.) were taken off in Japan . . . . Gaines slipped 2 days before we got to Japan and said he and the other one were going to be pulled off there. It’s really rotten politics.

“I’d sure like to write Winchell about it,” the letter said, referring to Walter Winchell, a popular newspaper columnist of the time.

Defense attorneys also have secured depositions from several former Marine officers, including Lt. Sidney Michael Rogers Jr., now a Larchmont, N.Y., attorney, who swore that on board the troopship Robertson “said he was going to call his father and see what he could do about rearranging his assignment, not going to Korea.”

Combat Duty Also at Issue

A side issue in the case is whether the minister’s continuing claims of having seen combat duty in Korea are false. McCloskey contends they are because the minister was never under fire or on the front lines.

In his deposition Robertson insisted that even though he served behind the lines at division headquarters in Korea, he faced dangers and saw combat duty.

As “officer of the day,” he said, he went to the perimeter “where fighting had taken place.” “I don’t know to this day, nor does anybody else know,” he said, “what was out on the other side of the darkness, whether there were people out there with weapons or not. But the colonel in charge took it as a very serious threat.”

In assessing the monetary damage he claims McCloskey’s charges could cause him, Robertson said that his loss in lecture fees alone “could conceivably be as much as $500,000 to $1 million a year” and that his “market value” in television commentary and writing books also could be damaged in the amount of millions of dollars over the 20 years “of productive life I have left.”